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deck!
    He flipped to the next photograph and his frustration flamed to anger.
    The picture showed an SS officer wearing a camouflage uniform standing in the field, jackboot planted firmly on a GI’s back. One hand was fastened round a lock of hair, lifting the head, the other bringing a pistol to the nape of the doomed soldier’s neck. The officer had blond hair and his face was streaked with dirt. An Iron Cross hung from his neck. Another was pinned to his breast. A hero. Four silver diamonds on his collar patch indicated his rank as major. Another man stood behind him, laughing.
    Seyss entered the field along with SS Sergeant Richard Biedermann and administered the coup de grace as necessary.
    Judge dropped the pictures onto the desk, turning away from Storey and closing his eyes. He’d thought his tireless digging had inured him to the loss of his brother, that his intimate knowledge of the manner and circumstance of Frankie’s death had somehow deadened the wound. He was wrong. The German’s recounting of the massacre—so factual, so cold, so
trivial
—coupled with the frank photographs ripped open his hurt and christened his pain anew.
    “You all right?” asked Storey.
    Judge tried to answer, but didn’t dare speak. His throat was suddenly unnavigable, his legs growing weaker by the second. Somehow he managed a grim nod.
    Storey patted him on the arm. “Like I said, there’s some bad news, too.”
    Judge shot Storey a withering glance, ignorant of the tear rolling down his cheek. What could be worse than seeing a photo of your only brother, the last member of your family, slaughtered in a desolate field in a foreign land?
    “Bad news?”
    “It’s Seyss,” said Storey. “He’s escaped.”

CHAPTER
    3
    T HE JEEP SPED DOWN THE Champs Élysées, past outdoor cafés crowded with servicemen and cinemas advertising American films. Flags of every color and nationality sprouted from parapets and doorways the length of the boulevard: the Stars and Stripes, the Union Jack, the Hammer and Sickle, and everywhere,
le bleu, blanc, et rouge
—the French Tricolor. Swatches of bunting, memories of V-E Day, adorned an occasional balcony. The marcelled crepe was faded, perhaps, wilted by summer rain, but no less proud because of it.
    Judge sat in the rear of the jeep, one hand clamped to the chassis, the other atop a compendious olive file square in his lap. The open air was a tonic for his woozy head. Everyone knew you didn’t mix booze and the same should be said for emotions, he thought. Anger, remorse, frustration, loss—Christ, he’d downed a shot of every one. A glance at the file sobered him. Stenciled across its cover were the letters UNWCC—United Nations War Crimes Commission—and inside was every fact, rumor, and half-truth the commission had gathered about the wartime doings of Major Erich Siegfried Seyss, late of the Waffen-SS. The latest addition had been made only an hour ago.
    Crossing the Place de la Concorde, the jeep rattled over a sea of cobblestones as it circled the Obelisk, the ancient masonic symbol that celebrated Napoleon’s victory over the British in Egypt, and later served as the model for the Washington Monument. An easterly gust carried a taste of the Seine: brine, moss, and the hint of caprice. The Invalides stood away to his right, a majestic stone armory seated at the head of a grass avenue five football fields in length. The Little General himself was interred somewhere inside its cool walls.
    Everywhere Judge looked in this town he was surrounded by history and all of it had to do with war. He wondered if it was foolish to allow personal animosity to prevent his taking part in what promised to be a seminal historical event of his time. He shook his head. War. Empire. Revenge. Scale them down and what did you have? Anger. Avarice. Pride. History was only personal grievance writ large.
     
    T WO DOORMEN CLAD IN MAROON topcoats waited at the base of the steps leading to the Hotel